Before you began your recovery journey, travel meant an opportunity to let loose. For each of us, there can be different reasons why alcohol and travel go together so well on a trip, but now that you’re away from home, for whatever reason, you’re going to have to strategize how to untangle the two. Drinking…
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Malnutrition almost always accompanies long-term substance abuse, yet most programs don’t incorporate nutrition into their treatment plans. Your body has been terribly depleted during your period of substance abuse. You need to rebuild those nutrient stores in order to heal. Face it: you haven’t been kind to your body, and it’s paying the price. When…
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Growing up, my favorite book wasn’t a novel or a fairytale, it was a diary: The Diary of Anne Frank. Without knowing the ordeal that was coming, someone had given Anne a typical birthday gift for a 12-year-old… A diary full of blank pages just waiting for her to fill them. In the midst of…
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Pets can be a powerful part of your recovery journey. Scientific journals are full of studies that show the physical and emotional health benefits that animals provide, and there are countless personal accounts of the role animals play in treatment and other difficult times in life. Pets are not only wonderful, they’re wonderful for us…
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Apologizing is a part of recovery. It’s a formal part of any 12-Step program, but realizing how we’ve hurt people and how badly we’ve screwed up is a natural part of the process. Sometimes it’s what drives us toward sobriety. Apologizing may be part of recovery, but it’s also a skill that takes work. A…
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“If you think differently, you’ll act differently.” It’s a huge tenet of counseling. Counselors challenge thinking processes in order to change behaviors. Some of these thinking patterns are called cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are filters we set up for recognizing patterns in the world, but they aren’t accurate patterns. We set them up for our…
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By Magdalena Horn Even back in ancient Greece, horses were used to help relieve both mental and physical pain. At Spring Gardens Recovery, we believe in its value as well. What is Equine Therapy? Equine therapy is a type of therapy tool that, as the name suggests, revolves around using horses in therapy sessions. While…
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Your loved one is in a rehab program. You’ve been down a long and tortuous road. There are a lot of things you could be feeling right now…exhaustion, relief, anger, pain, hope, sadness, worry… The one thing you know is that sooner or later, your loved one will be home. What do you do between…
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I’m working on developing a new habit. It’s a very simple one. I’m learning how to clean up after I eat. For some of us, that’s pretty basic, but as someone who has had ADHD and sensory issues my entire life, my attention gets easily distracted. When my plate is empty or my tummy is…
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Transition (n.): When life throws something at us that significantly changes our direction, altering how we view ourselves. Sometimes it’s a good thing–graduation, marriage, parenthood, promotion, retirement. Sometimes it’s not–a spouse dying, “empty-nest” syndrome, losing a job, being a victim of crime. Transitions can be triggered by either something good or something bad, and they…
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